A turnaround for the troubled tablet category is not on the cards in 2015. In fact, it is forecast to grow by just 8% year-on-year in 2015, with sales reaching 233-million units.
This is the word from Christopher Riley, CEO of The Notebook Company, who says the world saw double-digit growth in tablet sales since the introduction of the first Apple iPad in 2010, but things have tapered off since then.
Riley says that while tablet sales continue to grow, their pace was nowhere near that seen over the past four years.
According to analyst firm Gartner, 2015 will tell a similar story for tablets. The analyst expects shipments to rise from last year’s total of 216-million to 233-million this year.
According to Gartner, reasons for the slower growth in tablet sales include saturation in developed economies and slower replacement cycles for the devices compared to smartphones, due in part to the relative lack of differentiation between generations of larger devices.
Ranjit Atwal, a research director at Gartner, highlights several factors behind the “collapse” in the tablet market.
“One is that the lifetime of tablets is being extended – they are shared out amongst family members, and software upgrades, especially for iOS devices, keep the tablets current. Another factor includes the lack of innovation in hardware which prevents consumers from upgrading,” he says.